MLML lost a giant when Dr. James W. Nybakken passed away on Saturday, June 20. Dr. Nybakken received his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin in 1965 in Marine Invertebrate Zoology and Marine Ecology. His early work was on intertidal invertebrates in Alaska, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulf of California. He was first hired to be on the faculty at California State University, Hayward campus. Early in his career at CSU Hayward (now CSU East Bay), Dr. Nybakken and his family moved to Monterey Bay in 1966, where he continued to serve as a CSUH Professor and one of the founding faculty members at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) Throughout his tenure at MLML he witnessed the transformation of a small field station cobbled together in an old cannery building to a modern marine institution with an international reputation for excellence in marine science.

Friday, June 26, 2009

My colleague, Yoichi Kogure at the Japan Sea National Fisheries Research Institue in Niigata Japan just sent me this GREAT pic of him with what is probably the largest starfish in Japan! (and probably a contender for one of the largest in the world).

The latin name is Mariaster giganteus described by the famous Japanese starfish taxonomist Seitaru Goto in 1914 and seen only rarely since then!

M. giganteus lives in relatively deep-water from the upper continental slopes around Southern Japan. It is a rarely collected species. There have only been maybe two specimens, reported from Japan and I've only seen one specimen from outside Japan.

He has provided a caption for the picture which alludes to the ongoing rarity of sea star taxonomists both in Japan and around the world..

Yoichi proposes a Japanese name for this species:

Daiou gokaku hitode

Which translates into King (Daiou) Pentagonal (Gokaku) Seastar (hitode)

Walter differentiated the species from Labidiaster and put it into its own unique taxon and thus Plazaster was born!

I'll give credit to Walter K. Fisher's scholarship here. I looked through all of my Latin/Greek dictionaries and I couldn't find what the frak "Plaz-" in Plazaster means!And Something to think about...
In the northern-temperate band in Japan we have Plazaster....

Details for this are from this paper by J.G. Gehling. In 1987, a new fossil, called Arkarua adami, was described from the famous Precambrian Ediacara beds in the Flinders Range of South Australia (about 635-542 millions of years ago).

The absolute age here is important. This fossil is PRECAMBRIAN. Geologically, that's right at the edge of what we think are animals in the fossil record!!

Between the absolute geologic age and the fact that these are potentially early animals-its often difficult to "make the call" as to the importance of these fossils relative to more modern forms.

This beast has a GREAT name!! The genus is named for Arkaru, the name given to a large mythical snake by the Adnajamathana Aboriginal people of the central Flinders Rangers. (with species named for his eldest son). To quote from the paper:

Two of these legendary serpents are credited with the formation of what is locally the most prominent landform: Wilpena Pound, a synform after which the Pound Subgroup was named.

It apparently has pentagonal symmetry (which one finds in echinoderms) with what seem to be ambulacral grooves (where the tube feet emerge) and a distinct marginal rim similar to those in Paleozoic echinoderms called the edrioasteroids. With mouth facing down. They're small. (Only about 3-10 mm in diameter).

Unfortunately, the usual dead give-away characteristic, the calcium carbonate plate skeleton was not identified on the fossil...

Here, we have a reconstruction from Gehling's (1987) paper. Gehling collected some of these fossils from sediments that showed micro-current scour shadows where flow turbulence eroded a down-current crater.There were apparently two forms that he collected. One that was flattened with a disk-like strongly expressed marginal rim (top) and another that is more convex and looks sort of like a big delicious piroshki (a tasty meat-filled Russian pastry)!! These two may have represented feeding and resting positions of the animal. The big inflated "piroshki" form is the feeding and the disk-like form is the resting position.

Those are Echinoderms? REALLY? What are they related to?
These look like other Precambrian discoid forms like Tribrachidium, shown here:

And in the grand Echinodermata viewpoint, they go right down at the bottom..especially relative to the more familiar Paleozoic Edrioasteroidea...(see the bottom in red)

REALLY?
BUT not everyone thinks that these fossils are echinoderms. Arkarua is more easily justified as an echinoderm because its pentagonal but this and the related forms have been interpreted as MANY other kinds of animals: sponges, cnidarians, lophophorates and etc..

The short summary is that the project aims to clean up the taxonomy and systematics of an ecologically and financially important coral-reef holothurian (=sea cucumber) group via a global coalition of experts from all around the world.

Since the project's initial funding and start in September 2005 (and ongoing) their website has undergone a HUGE development in resources, making it an important resource to anyone interested in tropical holothurians.

Web Products. So what kind of resources? Take a look at the available information including

Bibliography This is a HUGELY useful section. It includes pdf of ancient Pre-Linnean papers and citations for a multitude of literature including biology, cultural references and of course...taxonomy..

Remarkably, one species Cucumaria frondosa ingested 73 times more plastic ribbons then expected!

They basically conclude that this was a preference of the individual species. The shapes and sizes were variable factors-but ultimately they strongly influenced the sea cucumbers' predisposition to feeding.

The authors complemented their lab work with field studies and found 105 to 214 pieces of plastic per liter of sediment!

And MORE important? They identified the toxic PCB from one of the more northern localities at a concentration of 0.0106 ug/g suggesting that PCB can be ingested by invertebrates in these soft-sediment communities!

Understand-sometimes I will have known this name for YEARS without knowing what the actual Latin translates into! And back in the old days, THAT was why the name was given as a Latin descriptor-to make it easy to remember!!!

Thus, I am often perplexed when the names make NO SENSE (or maybe they do but for the wrong reason-bear with me!)

The other day, I happened to be looking up the name of this handsome western Tropical Atlantic beast:Luidia senegalensis(Luidiidae)

Imagine my surprise-checking the records. This species has been collected from the "American"side of the tropical Atlantic (e.g., Florid,a Jamaica, etc.)..but not from Africa!

Oops! So perhaps, an erroneous collection locality record? YIKES! That name's being sitting around since 1816!! And who described it?? None other then famous French Biologist LAMARCK (and later J. Muller & O. Troschel)!! Pisaster giganteus(Asteriidae)So, now what about this one??

Hey! West coast Marine biology naturalist guys! How many of you know what Pisaster ACTUALLY means??Well...the easy part is "-aster" for star...The first part of that? Is for "pise" for "pea or bean" in reference to all the knobby spines on the surface!

But what about the Latin descriptor giganteus? In one sense, that doesn't seem to surprise anyone..."gigantic" or "big"...but if you've ever worked with one, Pisaster giganteus has NEVER seemed overly large... (the one above is only about a foot across)That is UNLESS you look at the Holotype! (i.e., the specimen on which the species was described)...its Frakkin' HUGE..

Observe. Curiously, the type is also six rayed. A fact, which fortunately did not make its way into the description!

Hippasteria spp. (Goniasteridae)Finally....a mystery which I've never quite managed to understand. Some names just DONT' MAKE SENSE.But here's the thing:

Hippasteria literally means "Horse star" (Hippa for horse and -aster for star). At first, I thought..well, maybe I misunderstood it, so I tracked down the original description from 1840 and lo and behold some of the first species described have names like "Hippasteria equestris" so..."horsy horse star"??

I don't get it. They don't look like horses. They don't have features that look like horses.

About Me

I pursue starfish related adventure around the world with a critical eye and an appreciation for weirdness.
Support has been courtesy of the National Science Foundation but the views and opinions presented herein are mine and do not reflect the opinions of them or any affiliated institutions.
Need to hire an invertebrate zoologist/marine biologist? Please contact me!